Autodidact420

Disclosure: I haven't read the full string of comments

I'm pretty sure you're a bit off on the Islamic side of things though.

a valid source of laws and doesn't think that God has given human kings the right to make laws the way Christianity thinks with the devine right of kings.

Kings' claim to rule seems to be fairly similar to that of an Islamic caliph, who are supposed to be prophets selected by God himself, and are able to create laws/etc. as he would want basically.

I'm in the middle of writing an essay due tomorrow morning so pardon the slightly off topic and short reply (I'll get back to you on the other matters later) but I am particularly curious about one topic that comes up here a lot, as far as I can tell, on discussions of existential risk. The topic is the AI and its relations to existential risk. By the sounds of it I may hold an extremely unpopular opinion, while I acknowledge that the AI could pose an existential risk, my personal ideas (which I don't have the time to discuss here or the points required to make a full post on the subject matter)is that an AI is probably our best bet at mitigating existential risk and maximizing the utility, security, and knowledge I previously mentioned. Does that put me at odds with the general consensus on the issue here?

I've heard other criticisms that he is just going to give it to a charity fund in a similar manner to other billionaires who place their children at control of the charity and then use it as a way to pass on wealth to their kids without any taxation. Not entirely sure of the credibility of the claim that Mark is doing it, but I do know that this scheme has been tried and worked for others before.

I agree to some extent, depending on how efficient advertising for a specific charity through a meta-charity is. I see what you're saying now after re-reading it, to be honest I had only very briefly skimmed it last night/morning. Curious, do have any stats on how effective Intentional Insights is at gathering more money for these other charities than is given to them directly?

Also, how does In In decide whether something is mitigating existential risk? I'm not overly familiar with the topic but donations to "Against Malaria Foundation" and others mentioned don't sound like the specific sort of charity I'm mostly interested in.

I feel like intelligence is similar to logic or grammar and faces the dunning kurger effects full force essentially. As they state in the abstract of their work: Their lack of skill deprives them not only of the ability to produce correct responses, but also of the expertise necessary to surmise that they are not producing them.

If you're able to "fake" being intelligent, you require the ability to produce the "intelligent" response, and the ability to recognize when you're not being intelligent. So if you don't have it, you can't really fake it... I mean, unless you're moderately skilled and meticulously research and craft your responses specifically for effect, but even then that means you're able to do so effectively...

I'm new here and not sure exactly what you expect when someone links, but it seems like you guys are generally intelligent so:

http://www.enotes.com/research-starters/sociological-theories-religion-structural

It sounds like what you're asking (with regards to the function of religion) is something that has been covered a great deal by the structural-functionalist sociological approach. If you're willing to read up on it there's a lot of information out there on the topic. Hope that helps! If you'd prefer I answer your question on here more directly feel free to ask, I'm in the middle of finals and haven't read up too much on the topic myself so I'd have to do some research before getting back to you.